An otherworldly, briskly paced installment in a consistently exhilarating series.
This fourth installment of a fantasy series finds a group of warriors engaged in battles and rescues while a menace looms.
A band of comrades has fought numerous evils. Now, she-elf X’andria, one of them, is missing, and Gnome and Boudreaux don’t plan on leaving the devastated village of Meriden until they find her. But Ruprecht has a vision of one of the group’s friends who’s somewhere in a sewer, suffering a wraith’s torment. Ruprecht, Ohlen, and Arden embark on a journey to save their cohort. While a sinister individual may be seeking revenge against someone in Ruprecht’s band, the warriors also separately face such dangers as skeletal assailants and giant bats. Meanwhile, Eleanor, a sorcerer who’s just lost her mentor, is curious about one of the last words he spoke: “Dormarion.” This happens to be the name of a long-dead cleric. With help from The High Cleric, Eleanor tracks down Dormarion’s book, which is a significant discovery if they can just locate the missing final page. As all of these events unfold, a diabolical being who’s been dormant for centuries may soon emerge. Hinsley packs this installment with intriguing characters and subplots. He nevertheless deftly concentrates on the series’ heroes as well as others returning from preceding books. The narrative moves quickly through its abundant subplots, from one starring a villain and his newfound “pet monster” to periodic flashbacks featuring a strange character whose relevance isn’t clear until late in the novel. Most of these storylines connect at the end and spawn another memorable cliffhanger. The author’s prose continually shines: “Night bathed the canyon in bluish black. The fall evening was chilly and clear, and…the first stars winked down.” Likewise, Garretsen’s stunning artwork provides a shadowy, surreal quality to images such as a man in chains and a figure reflected in a candle’s flame.
An otherworldly, briskly paced installment in a consistently exhilarating series. (acknowledgements, author bio, artist bio)Pub Date: April 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-359-88985-3
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Lulu.com
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
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